Tag: forest

Niels has asked me to make you aware of a new publication that some
‘Pelican-ers’ might find relevant.

I have edited a book on how learning and monitoring can become better
‘friends’ than is currently usually the case. The book comes off the press
tomorrow. The full reference: Guijt, Irene, ed. (2007). Negotiated
Learning: Collaborative Monitoring for Forest Resource Management .
Washington DC, Resources for the Future/Center for International Forestry
Research. Although the cases in the book focus on natural resource (forest)
management, the issues about how to create genuine learning through the
construction, negotiation and implementation of a monitoring process will
have much wider relevance.

“The first book to critically examine how monitoring can be an effective
tool in participatory resource management, Negotiated Learning draws on the
first-hand experiences of researchers and development professionals in
eleven countries in Africa, Asia, and South America. Collective monitoring
shifts the emphasis of development and conservation professionals from
externally defined programs to a locally relevant process. It focuses on
community participation in the selection of the indicators to be monitored
as well as in the learning and application of knowledge from the data that
are collected. As with other aspects of collaborative management,
collaborative monitoring emphasizes building local capacity so that
communities can gradually assume full responsibility for the management of
their resources. The cases in Negotiated Learning highlight best practices
but stress that collaborative monitoring is a relatively new area of theory
and practice. The cases focus on four themes: the
challenge of data-driven monitoring in forest systems that supply multiple
products and serve diverse functions and stakeholders; the importance of
building upon existing dialogue and learning systems; the need to better
understand social and political differences among local users and other
stakeholders; and the need to ensure the continuing adaptiveness of
monitoring systems.”